Seems like a made-up distinction that shouldn't be necessary since M6 has not even released. I suspect this is a marketing ploy to meant to drive up both interest while also increasing prices for the next generation of Mac hardware.
It's not simply marketing since the Pro/Max chips of a generation use the same cores as the regular version, just more of them or different combinations of performance and efficiency cores.
The claim is that M6 will be released, but the only variants will be lower end.
When they get to the M7 generation, they will make high end variants.
It's a real distinction because each generation of parts shares an architecture.
The article has an entire section speculating what the M6 parts will be, but says they'll top out around 200GB/s memory bandwidth and 12 graphics cores.
Why would it? Each generation of the M series has an architectural improvement on their chipsets. The difference between an M1 and an M1 Pro is the allocation and arrangement not the architecture. M6 to M7 presumably will have architectural changes.
Or did this announcement also add an M6 chip, and they're just skipping pro?
It's the same thing as how the Mac Studio got an M4 Max refresh, but they didn't make an M4 Ultra so if you want the 28+ core CPU or 60+ core GPU, that's still using an M3 Ultra.
This time it'll be across all the Pro, Max, and Ultra versions, if you want those they'll stay at the previous generation for the M6 cycle.
Not that weird - Apple has a huge set of chips and hardware and software products. Putting every single thing on a fixed identical update cycle together won't always make sense.
It can still be a very real, not made-up distinction, if the actual facts on the ground are that Apple designed an M6 line, but then scrapped that design and asked the team to create a new design with emphasis on AI-focused specs.
It's not the name that's important (the M7 could still come out as M6), is them skipping a design, or cpu "Tick-Tock model" step.
Are you thinking Apple is leaking that there will be a long wait for much more expensive chips in order to… what?
I am still skeptical that Apple intentionally leaked this because they normally are so tight-lipped, but there are reasons in favor of leaking this.